The principle of SEO is fairly straightforward: high rankings in SERPs lead to greater traffic and leads – and ultimately, sales. In 2014, a law firm wanted to generate leads through the most relevant digital marketing tactics. C1 Partners stepped in and launched an SEO campaign to achieve this goal.

The Client

The client is a small law firm in Springfield, Illinois, whose areas of practice is focused on criminal defense and DUI (Driving Under the Influence) defense. Established in 1842, the firm is presently run by the fourth and fifth generations of lawyers in the family, with a commitment to provide competent legal services through aggressive advocacy and communication.

The Problem

The firm had had their website for several years. Despite having a paid search set in motion, the website was failing to get the volume of traffic and leads they wanted, thus, affecting to get their ability to generate the desired sales.

The Objectives

Drive relevant, local traffic to the website.

Increase lead generation.

The Solution

C1 Partners set up a series of SEO strategies to drive relevant traffic to generate leads and sales:

Website Audit

We started with an audit to assess different aspects of the client’s website, such as on-page elements, performance, site architecture, etc. Our analysts found a few broken links, certain missing navigational elements and rich snippet implementation, duplicate content on-site, and numerous pages with un-optimized meta data and web copy.

Keyword Research and Mapping

We identified the keywords that would be most relevant to the client, which were grouped and targeted to the appropriate landing pages. We then recommended the addition of the targeted keywords to existing pages.

Competitor’s Analysis

We conducted a competitor’s analysis to determine our SEO targets and provide fundamental input to establish our overall strategy. We identified the client’s biggest competitors and set to work on finding the list of keywords they were ranking for and the number of backlinks they had.

Based on our analysis, we found that the more links and link types we have linking to authority and relevant sites, the better success rate for the client. Moreover, the fewer redirects we have, the better the user experience.

On-Page Optimization

After the client approved our recommendations, our team made the following changes:

On-page meta data and content optimization – we added the recommended keywords to the existing content in the targeted pages. We included a strong call-to-action for every meta data to boost click-through rate.

Off-Page Optimization

To help the client rank for local search, we looked into factors, such as the business’s location, relevance (in terms of region and niche) and prominence.

We then launched a strategy that provided high-quality and locally relevant links and citations. After identifying the target market, buyer persona, message platform, and brand positioning, our content team produced articles for blog post outreach, magazine news placement, and press release submission. These were published through our partner magazine sites and blog networks, guaranteed to be contextually related to the client’s niche to maximize ranking boost.

Link Cleanup

We conducted a link cleanup for domains that are unrelated or did not give value back to the website.

By utilizing these tactics, our team was able to improve the rankings of the firm’s website and increase the lead generation and revenue for specifically two practice areas, Criminal Law and DUI.

RESULTS

Today, the client’s website does not only rank ahead of the most dominant sites in four geographic areas, but it has expanded into new markets and more competitive and lucrative practice areas. They have also hired more attorneys to take on the additional case load.

From ranking only on the 5th page and farther, the client is now in the top two positions for 20 of their target keywords, where they get a 33% Click-Through Rate.

Traffic from Organic Search now comprises 75% of all website conversions. One out of 10 of these visitors become clients of the firm, a conversion rate of 375% more than their Paid Search campaigns.

With a Cost-Per-Lead of only $37.52, the client estimates an ROI on their SEO campaign with C1 Partners to be 473%.

Some Take-away

Ranking for the right keywords is a make-or-break opportunity for anyone looking to rank in local search queries. By identifying the market’s keyword demand, we not only learn about which terms to target, but learn about the customers as a whole. This enabled us to predict changes in demand, respond to shifting marketing conditions, and offer the services and content that users are actively looking for.

If you want to see significant improvement in your ranking and lead generation, get C1 Partners on board. Contact us today.